The plan
For several years, the Leeds Community Healthcare (LCH) NHS Trust Library team has subscribed to BrowZine (from ThirdIron) for LCH users. In 2020 we extended the subscription to include NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) staff, including all primary care colleagues in Leeds, giving a much more consistent service to our users.
We also provide a service to local authority public health staff in Leeds City Council, and they have access to BrowZine through links with Public Health England.
Over the last year, we have become firm converts to the joys of LibKey Nomad (a linked ThirdIron product) – you can read more about this product from Federica and Mel at Bradford District Care Trust. We have embedded our links into PubMed and Google Scholar, and also enjoy the benefits of the embedded interlibrary loan form. We have not (yet!) managed to get LibKey Nomad rolled out onto all Trust computers … that is still on the to-do list.
However, we did want to raise the profile of LibKey Nomad, and also Unpaywall, both of which can help our users get the one click access to articles that they need.
We decided to run a series of five training sessions in March 2021, each lasting a maximum of 30 minutes, all delivered via MS Teams, and all being delivered at different times of day.
Advertising the training
We advertised the training via our traditional mechanisms (i.e. emails and bulletins), but these messages were tailored to each organisation, rather than just one blanket message being sent out.
The advertising really sold the benefits of the product (“this will save you hours”), and focussed on what the product could give the users (“easy access to journals”), rather than worrying about the name.
We also tried to make booking onto the training as easy as possible, and offered the alternative of sending out a set of instructions, or providing a 1:1 at a date / time to suit the user.
Once the advertising was sent out, the bookings came in thick and fast. In over 20 years of offering training courses, I’ve never had such a positive response to a course.
Over 120 staff booked to attend in March, and when we offered some additional dates in May (“more dates added due to popular demand”), we had over 70 more bookings.
On the back of the advertising we were also booked to present to several full team meetings – primary care pharmacists / medicines managers were particularly keen to know more.
Delivering the training
A script for the training was developed, which was refined over time, and also allowed for other library team members to cover the course if required.
When delivering the course I had a Word document open containing all the links required so I had them readily to hand, and we showed one of the short BrowZine videos, which we have linked to from our Leeds Libraries for Health training videos page.
It was incredibly useful to have at least one other member of the library team looking after the chat while I was presenting the training. I also sent out the full set of instructions about using LibKey Nomad and Unpaywall immediately after the sessions for anyone who was keen to “get going” straight away.
Key learning for us
The wording of the advert was important, and obviously hit a nerve – we’ve never had such a positive response to bookings before.
We will be running more sessions in the future, but need to refine the booking system – we made it easy for the users to just email us back, but we need a more streamlined system to manage things behind the scenes. Within LCH, we can utilise our new intranet for staff to book onto our training, but that won’t be accessible to our CCG, primary care and public health colleagues.
Keeping the training via MS Teams short and snappy was a hit. I made sure to arrive early, allowing time for general chat at the start (I finally got to “see” some library users who I’ve dealt with for many years only by email) and also to allow delegates to arrive from other meetings. However, I made sure to always finish early before our 30 minute meeting was due to end. Providing training that would save delegates time in the future, and also gave them time to grab a cuppa before their next online meeting, went down very well.
What next?
This new (to us at least) method of delivering short bursts of training, delivered by MS Teams, will be particularly useful as we continue to share information about LibKey Nomad, as well as promote the new NHS Discovery Tool, and also the transition to the native interfaces in 2022.
Helen Swales
Library Services Manager
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust
